Echoing Hylas

Heerink, Mark

Published by University of Wisconsin Press

Heerink, M..
Echoing Hylas: A Study in Hellenistic and Roman Metapoetics.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015.
Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/.

For additional information about this book

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43466

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 1 Apollonius of Rhodes

A s has often been noted, the Argonautica significantly differs

from its main models, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Scholarly
attention on the relationship between Apollonius and Homer has focused on the
protagonist of the epic, Jason, who has been found to fall short with regard to the
heroic credentials of his Homeric predecessors.1 But Jason has other qualities,
such as his beauty and his intelligence, with which he can, and will, fulfill his
mission, acquiring the Golden Fleece,2 as gradually becomes clear in the course of
the epic.
As I will argue, this relationship between Jason and the Homeric heroes meta-
poetically reflects that of Apollonius with regard to the Homeric epic legacy. Jason
can thus be seen as a mise en abyme, a representation of the poet himself, gradually
maturing as an epic poet and finding his own poetic niche with regard to the
heroic-epic tradition. The latter is symbolized by the greatest Greek hero in the
story, Heracles, who is able to live up to Homeric expectations. The hero’s depar-
ture from the Argonautica at the end of the first book, due to the disappearance of
Hylas, is an important juncture in the development of both Apollonius and his
poetic alter ego Jason, as I will argue next. The episode constitutes the climax of
the continuing clash in the first book between Jason and Heracles and can be read
as a metapoetical allegory, symbolizing Apollonius’s “Callimachean” attitude vis-
à-vis the Homeric tradition through association of himself with Hylas. His matura-
tion, symbolized by his transition from involvement in a pederastic relationship
with Heracles to his marriage with a nymph, is accompanied by the leaving behind
of his adoptive father and teacher, Heracles.

Jason and Heracles

At the beginning of the Argonautica, Jason seems unfit for the task
set upon him, because of the presence of a greater hero, Heracles, who is even
unanimously chosen by the other Argonauts as their leader (1.342–43). In the

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course of the first book, however, the powerful Heracles increasingly does not
seem to fit this new type of epic, in which other, nonheroic qualities, such as Jason’s
way with women (Medea in particular) are more effective, as the seer Phineus will
tell the Argonauts quite explicitly in book 2:

ἀλλά, φίλοι, φράζεσθε θεᾶς δολόεσσαν ἀρωγὴν

Κύπριδος· ἐν γὰρ τῇ κλυτὰ πείρατα κεῖται ἀέθλων.
Arg. 2.423–24

But, my friends, be mindful of the wily assistance of the goddess Cypris, for
with her lies the glorious accomplishment of your tasks.

The third book of the Argonautica, moreover, in which Medea’s love of Jason
features prominently, opens with a second proem, stressing the importance of love
for the remainder of the epic:3

εἰ δ’ ἄγε νῦν, Ἐρατώ, παρά θ’ ἵστασο καί μοι ἔνισπε,

ἔνθεν ὅπως ἐς Ἰωλκὸν ἀνήγαγε κῶας Ἰήσων
Μηδείης ὑπ’ ἔρωτι· σὺ γὰρ καὶ Κύπριδος αἶσαν
ἔμμορες, ἀδμῆτας δὲ τεοῖς μελεδήμασι θέλγεις
παρθενικάς· τῶ καί τοι ἐπήρατον οὔνομ’ ἀνῆπται.
Arg. 3.1–5

Come now, Erato, stand by my side and tell me how from here Jason
brought the fleece back to Iolcus with the aid of Medea’s love, for you have
a share also of Cypris’s power and enchant unwed girls with your anxieties;
and that is why your lovely name has been attached to you.

At the first stopover of the Argonauts, on Lemnos, we already get an indication of

the way this epic is destined to go and the qualities the mission will require. Jason
is depicted here as a “love hero,” his ἀρετή being attractiveness to women, in this
particular case to the queen of the island, Hypsipyle.4 This love hero is set up as an
alternative to a heroic-epic, Homeric hero. Jason, for instance, enters the Lemnian
city, when summoned by Hypsipyle, dressed in an extensively described cloak,
which is “an erotic version of Achilles’ shield,”5 and although Jason’s progression
into the city is thus reminiscent of a Homeric battle scene, it is also a perversion of
one.6
The time does not seem ripe for eroticized epic as long as Heracles is part of
the expedition. While Jason and the other Argonauts accept Hypsipyle’s invitation,

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returning to the city and enjoying themselves with the Lemnian women, Heracles
chooses to stay by the Argo with some of his comrades:

ἔνθ’ ὁ μὲν Ὑψιπύλης βασιλήιον ἐς δόμον ὦρτο

Αἰσονίδης· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι ὅπῃ καὶ ἔκυρσαν ἕκαστος,
Ἡρακλῆος ἄνευθεν, ὁ γὰρ παρὰ νηὶ λέλειπτο
αὐτὸς ἑκὼν παῦροι τε διακρινθένθες ἑταῖροι.
Arg. 1.853–56

Then Jason set off for Hypsipyle’s royal palace, while the others went
wherever each chanced to go, except for Heracles, for he was left behind by
the ship of his own accord along with a few chosen comrades.

Although Heracles helps the Argonauts by reproaching them for their behavior
(1.865–74; see below) and in so doing assures the continuation of the expedition,
he also distances himself from Jason and most of his fellow Argonauts by staying
behind with a few men. Moreover, he appears to dislike the heterosexual love that
will prove to be so crucial for the fulfilment of the epic mission.7 On Lemnos,
Heracles thus appears to be out of place in the expedition. This is reinforced by
the intertextual contact between Heracles’s reproaching speech in the Argonautica
and Iliad 2, where Thersites addresses the Greeks in much the same way as Heracles
does:8

δαιμόνιοι . . .
ἴομεν αὖθις ἕκαστοι ἐπὶ σφέα· τὸν δ’ ἐνὶ λέκτροις
Ὑψιπύλης εἰᾶτε πανήμερον.
Arg. 1.865, 872–73

You fools! . . . Let each of us return to his own affairs; as for that fellow
[ Jason], let him spend all day long in Hypsipyle’s bed.

ὦ πέπονες, κάκ’ ἐλέγχε’, Ἀχαιίδες, οὐκέτ’ Ἀχαιοί,

οἴκαδέ περ σὺν νηυσὶ νεώμεθα, τόνδε δ’ ἐῶμεν
αὐτοῦ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ γέρα πεσσέμεν.
Il. 2.235–37

Soft fools! Base things of shame, you women of Achaea, men no more,
homeward let us go with our ships, and leave this fellow here [Agamemnon]
in the land of Troy to digest his prizes.

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 Apollonius of Rhodes

Although both men reproach their respective comrades and leaders, their purposes
are opposite: whereas Thersites urges the Greeks to abandon the expedition and
go home, Heracles’s aim is to make the Argonauts resume the expedition. Although
his words are justified, Thersites is an outsider. He is not part of the aristocratic
elite of kings who are the protagonists of the Iliad, and as a consequence Thersites
is scolded by Odysseus.9 Thersites’s position can also be seen from a metapoetical
point of view: his aim to end the war would result in the end of the Iliad.10 The
intertextual contact emphasizes that, like Thersites, Heracles is an outsider in the
epic in which he features. In the Argonautica, however, it is the archetypal hero,11
possessed of heroic-epic qualities that are constantly associated with Homeric
heroism,12 who does not fit the epic. Heracles’s position in the Hellenistic epic
can consequently also be read metapoetically: as aiming to turn the Argonautica
into a Homeric, heroic-epic poem. Like Thersites in the Iliad, Heracles is an out-
sider, revealing the way the epic is intended not to go, but ironically Apollonius’s
metapoetical statement opposes that of its Homeric intertext: in the Argonautica,
the great, Homeric hero Heracles is “the Thersites.”
It is already possible to see at the beginning of the epic a metapoetical dimen-
sion to the figure of Heracles that sets him at odds with the poetics of the Argo-
nautica. When the hero boards the Argo, he appears to be too heavy for the vessel:

μέσσῳ δ’ Ἀγκαῖος μέγα τε σθένος Ἡρακλῆος

ἵζανον, ἄγχι δέ οἱ ῥόπαλον θέτο· καί οἱ ἔνερθεν
ποσσὶν ὑπεκλύσθη νηὸς τρόπις.
Arg. 1.531–33

In the middle sat Ancaeus and mighty Heracles; he placed his club next to
him, and beneath his feet the ship’s keel sank deep.

This passage triggers the symbolic identification between the Argo and Apollonius’s
Argonautica, which pervades the entire epic, as scholars have frequently observed:
“The Argo symbolizes the poem when it sinks under Heracles’ feet or when it slips
through the Symplegades likened to a book-roll.”13 As a consequence, Heracles
not only literally but also metapoetically overburdens the Argo: he is too “heavy,”
so too traditionally heroic, for the Argonautica.14 In the course of the first book,
this misfit of Heracles in the epic is expressed continually, for instance in the
following stopover at Cyzicus. While Jason is received by Cyzicus, the eponymous
king of the Doliones, Heracles is left behind again (λέλειπτο, 992) with some
Argonauts, as on Lemnos (855, quoted above). The hero then deals with an attack
of the Earthborn giants (Γηγενέες) on his own (989–97), until the other Argonauts

25
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arrive to deal with the leftovers. Heracles is thus a great hero, but he is also a
loner,15 pursuing glory on his own, like a Homeric hero. Again, there is a meta-
poetical dimension to Heracles’s misfit. As Apollonius suggests, the Earthborn
giants have been sent by Hera:

δὴ γάρ που κἀκεῖνα θεὰ τρέφεν αἰνὰ πέλωρα

Ἥρη, Ζηνὸς ἄκοιτις, ἀέθλιον Ἡρακλῆι.
Arg. 1.996–97

For no doubt the goddess Hera, Zeus’ wife, had been nourishing those
terrible monsters too as a labor for Heracles.

Heracles’s feat is clearly associated with the traditional labors (ἀέθλοι) of the hero,
which belong in another kind of epic: a Heracleid, dealing solely with the heroic
feats of Heracles.16 This kind of post-Homeric poem on one hero is criticized by
Aristotle in his Poetics for lacking unity of plot in comparison to the epics of
Homer (Poet. 8, 1451a16–35). Later, Aristotle also criticizes two cyclic epics, the
Cypria and the Little Iliad for the same fault (Poet. 23.1459a16–b7).17 It is interesting
that Apollonius also seems to associate Heracleids and cyclic epics with each
other in the Cyzicus episode. As Denis Feeney notes, line 992, describing Heracles
as “left behind with the younger men” ( ἀλλὰ γὰρ αὖθι λέλειπτο σὺν ἀνδράσιν
ὁπλοτέροισιν) alludes to the opening line of the cyclic epic Epigoni: νῦν αὖθ’
ὁπλοτέρων ἀνδρῶν ἀρχώμεθα, Μοῦσαι, “But now, Muses, let us begin on the
younger men.”18 If we assume for now that Apollonius wrote his Argonautica in
accordance with Aristotelian ideas about epic, thus rejecting Heracleids and cyclic
epics,19 Heracles’s staying behind in Cyzicus, which symbolizes his misfit among
the crew and in this epic, is associated with this rejected kind of poetry, in which
Heracles actually belongs.
As we have seen earlier, however, Apollonius’s Heracles is also associated with
Homer, who is not rejected by Aristotle but is, quite to the contrary, used as a
positive example (see introduction). How should we reconcile these two associa-
tions of Heracles? First of all, Apollonius, whose Argonautica is heavily indebted to
the Iliad and the Odyssey, also does not reject Homer. The depiction of Heracles—
who is respected by the other Argonauts, acts as their model even after his depar-
ture from the expedition, and becomes a god at the end of the Argonautica—also
points in that direction.20 Apollonius’s point in associating Heracles with Homer
is that although Apollonius respects Homer’s heroic poetry, he also thinks that
this kind of poetry cannot be matched and that it does not belong to the con-
temporary, Hellenistic age. As such it should not be imitated, as it had been in

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post-Homeric epic poetry, such as the Epic Cycle, but new, unheroic poetic ways
should be sought, a position also advocated by Callimachus (see introduction).
Ironically, the outdated position of Heracles was already recognized by Homer
himself, in whose works Heracles “is generally represented as a violent and suc-
cessful mortal hero of an earlier generation.”21 Apollonius seems to state that the
heroics of Homeric poetry are now, in the Hellenistic age, equally outdated, and
he underlines his point by at the same time associating his hero with the poetry
that had revealed how worn out the heroic-epic tradition had become in the
Hellenistic age: the Epic Cycle and epics exclusively about Heracles.
So Apollonius’s Heracles seems more at home in a Heracleid, celebrating his
individual, heroic feats. In fact, Apollonius informs us that the hero has inter-
rupted his labors to participate in the Argonautica. When Heracles is introduced
in the catalog of Argonauts in book 1, we hear that he has already slain the Eryman-
thian boar, traditionally his fourth labor:

οὐδὲ μὲν οὐδὲ βίην κρατερόφρονος Ἡρακλῆος

πευθόμεθ’ Αἰσονίδαο λιλαιομένου ἀθερίξαι.
ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ ἄιε βάξιν ἀγειρομένων ἡρώων,
νεῖον ἀπ’ Ἀρκαδίης Λυρκήιον Ἄργος ἀμείψας,
τὴν ὁδόν, ᾗ ζωὸν φέρε κάπριον, ὅς ῥ’ ἐνὶ βήσσῃς
φέρβετο Λαμπείης Ἐρυμάνθιον ἂμ μέγα τῖφος,
τὸν μὲν ἐνὶ πρώτῃσι Μυκηναίων ἀγορῇσιν
δεσμοῖς ἰλλόμενον μεγάλων ἀπεθήκατο νώτων,
αὐτὸς δ’ ᾗ ἰότητι παρὲκ νόον Εὐρυσθῆος
ὡρμήθη.
Arg. 1.122–31

Nor indeed do we learn that mighty Heracles of steadfast determination

disregarded Jason’s eager appeal. But rather, when he heard the report that
the heroes were gathering, he had just crossed from Arcadia to Lyrceian
Argos, on the road by which he was carrying the live boar that fed in the glens
of Lampeia throughout the vast Erymanthian marsh. He put it down, bound
with ropes, from his huge back at the edge of the Mycenaeans’ assembly
place, and set out of his own accord against the will of Eurystheus.

The fact that Heracles is actually not allowed to interrupt his labors, as the tradi-
tion at which Apollonius hints informs us, is also an indication that there is some-
thing wrong with Heracles’s participation in the Argonautic expedition and thus
in the epic.22 But Heracles will find his own poetic world again by the end of the

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book. After Heracles has once more—but this time for good—been left behind by
the Argonauts in Mysia, the sea god Glaucus appears to the arguing Argonauts
and reassures them that it is not Heracles’s fate to continue the expedition:

Ἄργεΐ οἱ μοῖρ’ ἐστὶν ἀτασθάλῳ Εὐρυσθῆι

ἐκπλῆσαι μογέοντα δυώδεκα πάντας ἀέθλους,
ναίειν δ’ ἀθανάτοισι συνέστιον, εἴ κ’ ἔτι παύρους
ἐξανύσῃ. τῶ μή τι ποθὴ κείνοιο πελέσθω.
Arg. 1.1317–20

At Argos it is his [Heracles’s] destiny to toil for arrogant Eurystheus and

accomplish twelve labors in all, and to dwell in the home of the immortals
if he completes a few more. Therefore, let there be no remorse at all for
him.

So at the conclusion of the Hylas episode, which ends the first book, Heracles is
reunited with his own poetic world. This third stopover, after Lemnos and Cyzicus,
thus also seems to have metapoetical significance. In fact, as I will argue in what
follows, the Hylas episode constitutes the metapoetical climax of the book. Up to
this point, however, we have only considered how Apollonius implicitly discusses
the kind of epic that he rejects, as symbolized by Heracles. It is now time to con-
sider the character who opposes Heracles in the first book and embodies the poetics
of the Argonautica.

Jason, Apollonius, and Apollo

In the first book of the Argonautica, a tension is set up between

the heroic Heracles and the rather unheroic but attractive and intelligent Jason.23
As we have already seen, the difference between the two is emphasized by Heracles
himself in his speech at Lemnos, in which Jason is the main target of his reproach.
Next, at Cyzicus, while Heracles is fighting with monsters, Jason, by contrast, is
on a diplomatic mission to the king.24 At the beginning of the poem, this difference
between the two heroes is emphasized most clearly and explicitly, when Jason asks
the Argonauts to choose the best man as their leader:

τούνεκα νῦν τὸν ἄριστον ἀφειδήσαντες ἕλεσθε

ὄρχαμον ὑμείων, ᾧ κεν τὰ ἕκαστα μέλοιτο,
νείκεα συνθεσίας τε μετὰ ξείνοισι βαλέσθαι.
Arg. 1.338–40

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Therefore now without restraint choose the best man as your leader, who
will see to each thing, to take on quarrels and agreements with foreigners.

This results in a unanimous vote for Heracles, who declines, however, taking the
view that the person who gathered the Argonauts together, Jason, should also lead
them. A tension is thus created between the two characters concerning the ques-
tion of who is the best man to lead this particular epic, and the passage, right at the
start of the expedition, invites the reader to compare the heroes in what follows.
Although the Argonauts think that Heracles meets Jason’s requirements for leader-
ship best, the Cyzicus episode reveals that the diplomatic Jason has in fact un-
wittingly designated himself as the best leader for this Hellenistic epic, as he can
“take on agreements with foreigners.”25 Not only does Heracles’s simultaneous
fight with the Earthborn giants not belong to the Argonautica; the second fight in
Cyzicus even reveals the danger that heroic battle poses for the Hellenistic epic.
This fight between the Argonauts and their hosts, the Doliones, is characterized as
a Homeric battle narrative,26 but both parties are unaware that they are killing
their mutual friends: the Argonautica is not the place for heroic poetry. 27 In the
Hylas episode that follows, Jason also meets his other requirement for leadership,
“to take on quarrels,” when he refrains from force during his argument with
Telamon concerning the abandonment of Heracles. Jason thus grows in his role as
leader of the expedition, as was also suggested in the Lemnos episode. Although
his attractiveness was not yet useful there, it will become a crucial factor for success
in the second part of the epic.
If Heracles and the tension set up between him and Jason can be read meta-
poetically, it is a priori very likely that Jason also has metapoetical associations.
Whereas Heracles is associated with Homer and heroic epic, Jason would, by
analogy, be associated with Apollonius and his poetics.28 Another reason why this
scenario is a priori very likely is that Jason’s precedents, the protagonists of the
Homeric epics, which are Apollonius’s generic models,29 often represent the persona
of the poet in the text as instances of mise en abyme.30 The language and structure
of Achilles’s speeches, for instance, reveal striking similarities with Homer’s own
poetic techniques.31 Odysseus is often associated with bards,32 and his persona
merges with that of the poet when he tells the Phaeacians of his adventures.33 Other
characters in Homer’s epics also function briefly as mises en abyme of the poet when
they deal with the experiences at Troy.34 In Iliad 3, for example, Helen is described
as weaving a web that depicts battles between the Greeks and the Trojans:

τὴν δ’ εὗρ’ ἐν μεγάρῳ. ἡ δὲ μέγαν ἱστὸν ὕψαινε,

δίπλακα πορφυρέην, πολέας δ’ ἐνέπασσεν ἀέθλους

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Τρώων θ’ ἱπποδάμων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων,

οὓς ἕθεν εἵνεκ’ ἔπασχον ὑπ’ Ἄρηος παλαμάων.
Il. 3.125–28

She [Iris] found Helen in the hall, where she was weaving a great purple
web of double fold on which she was embroidering many battles of the
horse-taming Trojans and the bronze-clad Achaeans, which for her sake
they had endured at the hands of Ares.

As the scholion (bT) on lines 126–27 shows, Helen and her web were already in
antiquity associated with Homer himself and his Iliad, through the metaphor of
weaving for the poetic process:35 ἀξιόχρεων ἀρχέτυπον ἀνέπλασεν ὁ ποιητὴς τῆς
ἰδίας ποιήσεως, “The poet has here fashioned a worthy model of his own poetry.”
Similarly, characters in the Argonautica, such as the archetypal poet Orpheus
and Phineus, whose prophetic summary of what is to come reflects the actual
adventures as told by Apollonius, occasionally merge with the persona of the poet
Apollonius.36
But what about the epic’s protagonist? Although Jason is not, like his models
Achilles and Odysseus, associated with singing or bards, he is associated with
Apollonius through Apollo, the patron of both Jason and the poet. In the first
book of the Argonautica, this association is made very clear, as Apollonius’s invoca-
tion to Apollo, which starts his epic (ἀρχόμενος σέο Φοῖβε, “beginning with you
Phoebus”), is echoed by Jason’s honoring Apollo Embasios (“of Embarkation”) to
start his epic voyage (marked in bold):37

τείως δ’ αὖ καὶ βωμὸν ἐπάκτιον Ἐμβασίοιο

θείομεν Ἀπόλλωνος, ὅ μοι χρείων ὑπέδεκτο
σημανέειν δείξειν τε πόρους ἁλός, εἴ κε θυηλαῖς
οὗ ἕθεν ἐξάρχωμαι ἀεθλεύων βασιλῆι.
Arg. 1.359–62

In the meantime, let us also build an altar on the shore for Apollo Embasius,
who in an oracle promised to give me signs and point out the passages of
the sea, if with sacrifices in his honor I would begin my task for the king.

Furthermore, the πόρους ἁλος (“passages of the sea”), which Jason asks Apollo to
point out to him, recall a moment in the proem when the poet asks the Muses to
inspire his poem, which features the πόρους ἁλος:38

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νῦν δ’ ἂν ἐγὼ γενεήν τε καὶ οὔνομα μυθησαίμην

ἡρώων, δολιχῆς τε πόρους ἁλός, ὅσσα τ’ ἔρεξαν
πλαζόμενοι· Μοῦσαι δ’ ὑποφήτορες εἶεν ἀοιδῆς.
Arg. 1.20–22

But now I wish to relate the lineage and names of the heroes, their journeys
on the vast sea, and all they did as they wandered; and may the Muses be
inspirers [or : interpreters] of my song.

This suggests that Jason is Apollonius’s alter ego in the text, and there is more:
Jason also informs us about the Argonautica’s poetics, as revealed by the common
link between poet and character, Apollo. The prominence of the god of poetry in
relation to both Jason and Apollonius is quite remarkable, for it is not he but Hera
who is traditionally the patron god of Jason and his expedition. Furthermore, the
invocation of a god instead of a goddess Muse constitutes a significant departure
from the epic’s most important models, the Iliad and the Odyssey.39 This makes
the presence of the god very striking and points in the direction of Callimachus,
whose poetics are quite explicitly expressed by Apollo in two famous programmatic
passages, the prologue to the Aetia (fr. 1.21–28 H) and the end of the Hymn to
Apollo (105–12).40 In addition to the fact that Apollo is the patron deity of Apollo-
nius/Jason and Callimachus, there is also clear intertextual contact between the
passages dealing with Apollo in both the Argonautica and Callimachus’s poetry.41
But who alludes to whom? This specific question is part of a larger, notorious
problem concerning the relative chronology of the works of the three major
Hellenistic poets.42 I will negotiate the impasse that this discussion has reached by
accepting the productive hypothesis that these poets, working in the museum,
were quite aware of and could allude to each other’s work in progress.43 The specific
intertextual contact between Callimachus and Apollonius would then have taken
place in both directions and can be interpreted accordingly.44 On that basis, I take
Apollonius to allude to Callimachus in this specific case, taking over the meta-
poetical role of Apollo in the Aetia and the Hymn to Apollo. Yet the situation can be
reversed—Callimachus reading Apollonius metapoetically and making the latter’s
statements explicit—without any disabling implications for the metapoetical di-
mension of either text.
Apart from this intertextual contact, there are good reasons to suppose
that Apollonius’s patron god has a metapoetical role in the Argonautica similar to
the one he has in Callimachus. As we have just seen, Apollonius not only follows
but paradoxically also deviates from Homeric practice by addressing Apollo in

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the opening line. This attitude toward Homer is continued in what immediately
follows:

ἀρχόμενος σέο, Φοῖβε, παλαιγενέων κλέα φωτῶν

μνήσομαι.
Arg. 1.1–2

Beginning with you, Phoebus, I shall recall the famous deeds of men born
long ago.

Apollonius makes it clear that he is writing an epic, with Homer as its main
model, for κλέα φωτῶν (“famous deeds of men”) recalls the Homeric κλέα ἀνδρῶν
(“famous deeds of warriors”), the singing of which denotes epic poetry.45 In the
Iliad, for instance, Achilles sings κλέα ἀνδρῶν by his ships (Il. 9.189; cf. 9.524), and
in the Odyssey Homer’s alter ego Demodocus does the same at the Phaeacian court
(Od. 8.73). Apollonius, however, has strikingly changed the Homeric ἀνδρῶν to
φωτῶν, and because the Argonauts are denoted by this word immediately after the
mention of the god Apollo in his hymnic address, the meaning of φωτῶν “mortals
(as opposed to gods)” (LSJ III) is at least suggested. The words that reveal Apollo-
nius’s work as an epic in the tradition of Homer thus at the same time distance the
Argonautica from Homer’s heroic poetry: Apollonius will sing of ordinary mortals.46
Another link between Apollonius and Jason is thus established, as the relationship
between Apollonius and Homer is not only paralleled by the tension that is set up
between Jason and the archetypal hero Heracles, as we have seen earlier, but also
by the intertextual contact between Jason and his heroic, Homeric models.
This tension with Homer points in the direction of Callimachean poetics,
whose patron deity Apollo advocates similar ideas about poetry.47 In fact, scholars
have shown that Apollonius’s Argonautica reveals an attitude that resembles Callima­
chus’s with regard to Homer and heroic-epic poetry in several ways. Apollonius,
for instance, does not renounce the works of Homer, which are obviously an
important model for the Argonautica,48 but the epic is strikingly unheroic. The
Argonautica can be said to be “Callimachean” for several reasons, for instance in its
extensive use of etiologies,49 which recall Callimachus’s Aetia, and its bypassing
direct imitation of Homer by telling a story set a generation before the Trojan
war. The unheroic character of the poem, however, is the most obvious and exten-
sive way in which the epic expresses its allegiance to Callimachean poetics.50
So Jason, whom scholars have always seen as falling short with regard to
the heroic credentials of his Homeric predecessors, seems to resemble the poet

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Apollonius himself. This observation—combined with the already established

metapoetical connection of both Jason and Apollonius with Callimachus’s
Apollo—creates the impression that Jason is a mise en abyme, a poetic alter ego of
the poet Apollonius and his Callimachean attitude. As Wolfgang Kofler has already
suggested, behind Jason, who is in doubt and afraid with regard to the mission
imposed on him, lurks the poet himself, trying to find a way to complete his
“Heraclean-Homeric” task of writing a heroic epic in his own, Callimachean
way.51 In the first book of the Argonautica, the heroic-epic tradition is still looming
in the background, as personified by Heracles. The hero’s place in the Hellenistic
epic, however, is questioned more and more, and at the same time the qualities of
the intelligent “love hero” Jason increasingly reveal themselves as essential for the
Callimachean epic in hand. In what follows, I will show how the Hylas episode
at the end of the first book is the climax of the metapoetical tension between
Homeric, heroic epic, as symbolized by Heracles, and Callimachean poetry, as
symbolized by Hylas. This boy, who causes Heracles’s exit, seems to act as a kind
of prefiguration of Jason, revealing the way the epic will go.

Ἔρις on the Argo

After the winds have abated, the Argonauts row away from Cyzicus
to leave their traumatic experience on the peninsula behind and start a rowing
contest, which marks the beginning of the Hylas episode:

ἔνθ’ ἔρις ἄνδρα ἕκαστον ἀριστήων ὀρόθυνεν,

ὅς τις ἀπολλήξειε πανύστατος· ἀμφὶ γὰρ αἰθὴρ
νήνεμος ἐστόρεσεν δίνας, κατὰ δ’ εὔνασε πόντον.
Arg. 1.1153–55

Then rivalry spurred on each one of the heroes, to see who would be last to
quit, since all around them the still air had smoothed the swirling waters
and lulled the sea to sleep.

Richard Hunter notes: “This is the closest Apollonius comes to including a scene
of sports on the pattern of Iliad 23.”52 As was shown in the course of the first book,
and most recently in the preceding Cyzicus episode, the Argonautica is not going
to be a heroic epic, and this point is made clear very dramatically somewhat later,
in the remainder of the rowing contest. When the winds rise, and the other, ex-
hausted Argonauts stop rowing, Heracles continues on his own:

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αὐτὰρ ὁ τούς γε
πασσυδίῃ μογέοντας ἐφέλκετο κάρτεϊ χειρῶν
Ἡρακλέης, ἐτίνασσε δ’ ἀρηρότα δούρατα νηός.
Arg. 1.1161–63

But Heracles kept pulling his weary companions along, one and all, by the
strength of his hands, and made the well-joined timbers of the ship quake.

Whereas Heracles appeared too heavy for the Argo—and thus the poem—when
he first boarded the ship (1.531–33), he is now revealed as a real danger to it. It is clear
that the Argonautica is not the place for Homeric competition nor for Heracles,
who is obviously in his element with this kind of action.53 The hero is thus asso-
ciated with Homer, which is also the case in the immediately following scene, in
which Heracles breaks his oar:

ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ Μυσῶν λελιημένοι ἠπείροιο

Ῥυνδακίδας προχοὰς μέγα τ’ ἠρίον Αἰγαίωνος
τυτθὸν ὑπὲκ Φρυγίης παρεμέτρεον εἰσορόωντες,
δὴ τότ’ ἀνοχλίζων τετρηχότος οἴδματος ὁλκοὺς
μεσσόθεν ἆξεν ἐρετμόν· ἀτὰρ τρύφος ἄλλο μὲν αὐτὸς
ἄμφω χερσὶν ἔχων πέσε δόχμιος, ἄλλο δὲ πόντος
κλύζε παλιρροθίοισι φέρων. ἀνὰ δ’ ἕζετο σιγῇ
παπταίνων· χεῖρες γὰρ ἀήθεσον ἠρεμέουσαι.
Arg. 1.1164–71

But when, in their eagerness to reach the mainland of Mysia, they were
passing within sight of the mouth of the Rhyndacus and the great tomb of
Aegaeon, a short distance beyond Phrygia, then, as Heracles was heaving up
furrows in the rough swell, he broke his oar in the middle. Still grasping a
piece of it in his two hands, he fell sideways, while the sea carried the other
piece away on its receding wash. He sat up, looking around in silence, for
his hands were not used to being idle.

This scene again emphasizes that Heracles is too big and heroic for the Argo, but
the mention of the Giant Aegaeon is possibly also an allusion to Iliad 1.404, the
only occurrence of the name in the entire Homeric corpus, in a scene in which
Achilles is asking his mother, Thetis, for help against the injustice inflicted on him
by Agamemnon: she should beg Zeus to help him and remind him of how she
once helped Zeus against a revolt of Hera, Poseidon, and Athena by employing

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Aegaeon as his bodyguard.54 Not only does the Apollonian context (a Homeric
contest) make the allusion to Homer more likely, but also the context of the
Homeric passage itself, the eris (“strife”) between Achilles and Agamemnon as to
who is the best of the Achaeans, tells strongly in favor of the allusion, for the Argo-
nauts are also involved in an eris (ἔρις, “contesting,” 1.1153).55 The intertext invites
us to read this ἔρις metaphorically as well, as a “strife” as to who is the best of the
Argonauts, a strife that already started at the beginning of the expedition, when
the Argonauts had to choose τὸν ἄριστον (1.338), in a passage that also evoked the
strife between Agamemnon and Achilles.56
In fact, the entire Hylas episode is presented as a miniature epic on ἔρις, as it
begins in the style of a (Homeric) epic, in which the poem’s subject is denoted in
the first line, often with the first word.57 The immediately following word (ἄνδρα),
the first word of the Odyssey, underlines the fact that we are dealing with a minia-
ture epic. This interpretation is reinforced by a thematic ring composition, for the
episode ends with another “strife” (νεῖκος, 1284) among the Argonauts concerning
Heracles, whom they have just unwittingly left behind in Mysia. This ring com-
position is itself strengthened by another, for the description of the first ἔρις
(1.1153–71), denoting the rowing contest that results in Heracles breaking his oar,
is immediately followed by an elaborate description of the time of day when the
Argonauts arrived in Mysia:

ἦμος δ’ ἀγρόθεν εἶσι φυτοσκάφος ἤ τις ἀροτρεὺς

ἀσπασίως εἰς αὖλιν ἑὴν δόρποιο χατίζων,
αὐτοῦ δ’ ἐν προμολῇ τετρυμένα γούνατ’ ἔκαμψεν
αὐσταλέος κονίῃσι, περιτριβέας δέ τε χεῖρας
εἰσορόων κακὰ πολλὰ ἑῇ ἠρήσατο γαστρί·
τῆμος ἄρ’ οἵ γ’ ἀφίκοντο Κιανίδος ἤθεα γαίης
ἀμφ’ Ἀργανθώνειον ὄρος προχοάς τε Κίοιο.
Arg. 1.1172–78

At the hour when a gardener or plowman gladly leaves the field for his hut,
longing for dinner, and there on the doorstep, caked with dust, he bends
his weary knees and stares at his worn-out hands and heaps curses on his
belly, then it was that they reached the homesteads of the Cianian land near
the Arganthonian mountain and the mouth of the Cius river.

A similar, albeit somewhat less extensive, time indication of the type ἦμος . . .
τῆμος features immediately before the νεῖκος among the Argonauts takes place,
thus creating a ring within a ring:58

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ἦμος δ’ οὐρανόθεν χαροπὴ ὑπολάμπεται ἠὼς

ἐκ περάτης ἀνιοῦσα, διαγλαύσσουσι δ’ ἀταρποί,
καὶ πεδία δροσόεντα φαεινῇ λάμπεται αἴγλῃ,
τῆμος τούς γ’ ἐνόησαν ἀιδρείῃσι λιπόντες.
ἐν δέ σφιν κρατερὸν νεῖκος πέσεν.
Arg. 1.1280–84

But at the time when bright dawn shines down from the sky, as it rises from
the horizon, and the pathways are clearly visible, and the dewy plains sparkle
with a bright gleam, they realized that they had unwittingly left those men
[Heracles, Hylas, and Polyphemus] behind. And fierce strife came upon
them.

So the Hylas episode seems to be a miniature epic on “strife,” and more specifi-
cally a miniature Iliad, Apollonius’s most important intertext for this episode, in
which the ἔρις theme plays a crucial role. Although ἔρις and νεῖκος are synonyms,
at first sight the two kinds of “strife”—denoting respectively the rowing contest
and the quarrel among the Argonauts—seem to refer to completely different
matters, not providing the “epyllion” with thematic unity.59 Both confrontations
have an important similarity, however, in that they concern Heracles’s position on
the Argo. We have already seen how Heracles breaking his oar in the rowing
contest constitutes the climax of the hero’s misfit on the Argo. That Heracles is too
heroic is revealed at the moment when he is competing with the other Argonauts,
and this gives the ἔρις theme a metapoetical dimension, as symbolizing a strife
between heroic poetry and unheroic, Callimachean poetry. This is reinforced when
we take a closer look at the νεῖκος that ends the Hylas episode. Here the symbol of
Apollonius’s Callimachean epic, Jason, is fiercely addressed by Heracles’s comrade
Telamon, who accuses him of having left Heracles behind on purpose (1290–95).
The scene clearly recalls the Homeric quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon
in Iliad 1,60 but the difference is striking. As Apollonius states, anger has taken
hold of Telamon (Τελαμῶνα δ’ ἕλεν χόλος, 1289), through which he resembles
Achilles. As Glaucus will very shortly reveal, “the reasons for his anger are unsub-
stantiated; his Achillean wrath is empty.”61 Consequently, Telamon will apologize
to Jason for his behavior afterward (1332–35). Jason, on the other hand, does not
react at all to Telamon’s rage. He avoids an “Iliadic” conflict and again proves to
be the best leader for this new, unheroic epic, which, according to Jason himself,
requires the ability “to take on quarrels” (νείκεα . . . βαλέσθαι, 1.340). Accordingly,
Jason immediately accepts Telamon’s offer to make up after Glaucus’s revelation,
saying that he will not harbor “bitter wrath” (ἀδευκέα μῆνιν, 1339) against him.62

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Jason renounces the typically epic emotion, which is the main theme of the Iliad,
and thus, as mise en abyme of Apollonius, heroic poetry in the style of the Iliad.
So the quarrel between Jason and Heracles’s stand-in Telamon can—just as the
rowing contest—be seen as one between two kinds of poetry: unheroic, Callim­a­
chean poetry and the Homeric-heroic poetry that will eventually be left behind.63
Whereas the Hylas episode initially resembled an Iliad, it is ironically the very
theme that invited comparison with Homer’s epic—ἔρις—that also tropes Apol-
lonius’s Callimachean deviation from Homer. This interpretation is reinforced by
the fact that the Hylas episode—starting with Iliadic games and ending with a
quarrel—seems to invert the structure of the entire Iliad, which starts with the
quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon and which features funeral games for
Patroclus near the end, in book 23.64
In what follows, I will argue that the center of the Hylas episode reflects the
ἔρις scenes that frame it. In their parallel but also contrasting actions, Heracles and
Hylas symbolize the strife between Homer’s heroic and Apollonius’s Callimachean
epic poetry.

Heracles into the Woods

After the Argonauts have landed in Mysia, Heracles goes into the
woods (εἰς ὕλην, 1188) to find himself a tree to make a new oar. When the hero has
found a pine tree, he starts pulling it out of the ground with excessive force. His
brute action is compared to a storm that hits a ship’s mast:

ὡς δ’ ὅταν ἀπροφάτως ἱστὸν νεός, εὖτε μάλιστα

χειμερίη ὀλοοῖο δύσις πέλει Ὠρίωνος,
ὑψόθεν ἐμπλήξασα θοὴ ἀνέμοιο κατάιξ
αὐτοῖσι σφήνεσσιν ὑπὲκ προτόνων ἐρύσηται·
ὣς ὅ γε τὴν ἤειρεν.
Arg. 1.1201–5

And as when, just as the wintertime setting of baneful Orion occurs, a swift
blast of wind from on high unexpectedly strikes a ship’s mast and rips it
from its stays, wedges and all, so did he lift up the pine tree.

The ship recalls the Argo, and the simile brings to mind the preceding rowing
contest, in which Heracles endangered the Argo and, metapoetically, Apollonius’s
poem. By pulling the tree out of the ground, Heracles again poses a danger to the
ship—albeit indirectly, through the simile.65 As the tree is a pine tree, the material

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of which the Argo is traditionally said to be made,66 the impression is created that,
by analogy with the rowing contest, Heracles’s uprooting of the tree can also be
read metapoetically as endangering Apollonius’s epic, as symbolically represented
by the tree.
This kind of symbolism brings to mind Callimachus’s fragmentary fourth
Iamb (fr. 194 Pf.), where, as most scholars agree, the olive tree quarreling with the
laurel tree embodies the poet’s poetics.67 In the remainder of this section, I will
argue that Apollonius’s pine tree similarly evokes his epic’s Callimachean poetics,
which are endangered by Heracles. The hero’s expedition into the woods ( εἰς
ὕλην, 1188) thus seems to become a metapoetical journey, into Callimachean terri-
tory, through activation of the metaphorical meaning of ὕλη as “(poetic) subject
matter.” This situation may be compared to what Virgil would later say in his
Aeneid: itur in antiquam silvam, “Into an ancient forest goes their way” (Aen.
6.179). In the first instance, this line refers to Aeneas’s search for wood for Misenus’s
pyre, but at the same time it both triggers and describes the intertextual process in
the following lines, which rework a passage from Ennius’s Annales.68 Virgil has
activated the metaphorical meaning of silva, as, I suggest, Apollonius has done
with its Greek equivalent ὕλη here in the Hylas episode.69 That Apollonius seems
metapoetically to express his allegiance to Callimachean aesthetics through a tree
that is then threatened specifically recalls a story in Callimachus.
Heracles is involved in an activity that can be described as tree violation,
which was evaluated very negatively in antiquity and could count on divine retribu-
tion, especially when it concerned a sacred grove.70 A well-known, contemporary
literary parallel is the tree violation in Callimachus’s Hymn to Demeter, where
Erysichthon invades a sacred grove of Demeter with the purpose of cutting down
trees to build a lavish banqueting hall.71 After the first tree, a poplar, has been
struck, Demeter is alerted by the sound of the tree being struck, or rather by the
cry of its coeval nymph, and punishes the violator with perpetual hunger.
This Erysichthon story is not just Callimachean in the sense that it was told by
Callimachus; it has also been interpreted metapoetically, as allegorizing Callima-
chus’s poetics.72 As Carl Werner Müller and Jackie Murray have argued, Callima-
chus’s poetical program is in this hymn personified by Demeter, who looks after
Callimachean poetry as symbolized by her sacred grove. This interpretation is
based on the similarities with the programmatic end of the Hymn to Apollo, where
it is said that “the bees bring water to Deo [Demeter] not from every source, but
where it bubbles up pure and undefiled from a holy spring, its very essence” (110–
12).73 The bees mentioned are priestesses of Demeter, but the denotation also
triggers the metaphor of the bee for the poet:74 the devotees of Demeter are Cal-
limachean poets. The narrator of the Hymn to Demeter is exactly such a devotee,

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who is furthermore associated with Callimachus himself, as the first-person narrator

of the poem merges with the persona of the poet.75 The metapoetical dimension
of Callimachus’s Demeter is reinforced by the Aetia prologue, in which “Callima-
chus aligns himself with Philitas’ elegiac poem Demeter”:76 ἀλλὰ καθέλκει / [δρῦν]
πολὺ τὴν μακρὴν ὄμπνια Θεσμοφόρο[ς, “But the nourishing Lawgiver / by far out-
weighs the long [oak]” (Aet. fr. 1.9–10 H). If this is indeed the meaning of these
lines,77 it is likely that Callimachus derived the metapoetical significance of his
Demeter from Philitas’s poem, which, as Callimachus’s allusion would suggest,
promoted poetics similar to those of Callimachus.78 That both poets shared poetical
ideas is also suggested by Propertius, who, in his programmatic elegy 3.1, aligns his
own poetical ideas with these two poets, placing them in the same sacred and
poetical grove (nemus):79

Callimachi Manes et Coi sacra Philitae,

in vestrum, quaeso, me sinite ire nemus.
primus ego ingredior puro de fonte sacerdos
Itala per Graios orgia ferre choros.
dicite, quo pariter carmen tenuastis in antro?
quove pede ingressi? quamve bibistis aquam?
Prop. 3.1.1–6

Spirit of Callimachus and poetic rites of Coan Philitas, allow me, I pray, to
go into your grove. I am the first priest from the pure spring to begin bearing
Italian sacraments to the accompaniment of Greek music. Tell me, in what
glen did you together refine your song? or with what foot did you begin? or
what water did you drink?

As Murray comments on this passage: “From Propertius’ declaration of his alle-

giance with Callimachus and Philitas it is evident that adopting Callimachean
poetics was figured as being initiated into the secret rites of Demeter, and that
these rites were associated with the goddess’s grove.”80 Although Propertius does
not mention Demeter, which makes allusion to Callimachus’s hymn (let alone to
Philitas’s Demeter) hard to pin down here, Callimachus’s grove can indeed, like
Propertius’s grove, be read metapoetically as a landscape symbolizing Callimachean
poetry. As Murray suggests, Callimachus is here “concretizing the metaphor of
ὕλη as poetic material. Erysichthon’s attempt to convert the ὕλη of the grove into a
banquet hall is an attempt to appropriate and transform poetical material.”81 So
Erysichthon, by violating the grove, opposes Callimachus’s new poetics, and the
banqueting hall he plans to build by analogy symbolizes old, epic poetry. The

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allusions to Homer should also be understood in this light. During his attack on
the grove, Erysichthon’s ferocity is, for instance, described with a typically epic
simile:82

τὰν δ’ ἄρ’ ὑποβλέψας χαλεπώτερον ἠὲ κυναγὸν

ὤρεσιν ἐν Τμαρίοισιν ὑποβλέπει ἄνδρα λέαινα
ὠμοτόκος, τᾶς φαντὶ πέλειν βλοσυρώτατον ὄμμα
H. Dem. 50–52

But he looked at her more fiercely than a lioness in the mountains of Tmarus
looks at a huntsman when she has just given birth (then, it is said, her look
is most fearful).83

Furthermore, as Anthony Bulloch has shown, Demeter’s grove, as described in

lines 27–29 of Callimachus’s hymn, resembles the place where Odysseus and
Melanthius meet in the Odyssey (17.208–11),84 and Murray takes this lead to show
that Erysichthon is associated with Odysseus.85 The Odyssey is also a relevant inter-
text with regard to the banqueting hall that Erysichthon wants to build, as “the
banquet hall is the place where epic story-telling takes place.”86 In short, Erysich-
thon is associated with Homeric, heroic-epic poetry, to which, as we have seen
earlier, Callimachus is not opposed. The problem with Erysichthon, however, is
that he is violating the Callimachean grove.
Something similar seems to be the case in Apollonius’s Hylas episode. Contrary
to Erysichthon, however, Heracles is not rejected by Apollonius, for after his
departure from the epic, he will remain an important model for the Argonauts,
especially in book 4, in the desert of Libya. There the Argonauts literally and
metaphorically find themselves in the footsteps of the hero,87 who saves them from
starvation by creating a spring, in a scene that has a clear metapoetical dimension
(4.1393–1460).88 The problem with Heracles in the Hylas episode, however, is that
he is too “heavy” for the Argo and poses a danger to the epic, as Erysichthon did to
the Callimachean grove of Demeter.
The stories of Apollonius and Callimachus, then, resemble each other in
having a metapoetical dimension that involves characters with epic connotations
violating metapoetical trees. I think, however, that Apollonius also specifically
alludes to Callimachus’s hymn, as the pine tree seems to allude to the poplar tree
that is struck by Erysichthon, causing Demeter to come into action:

ἦς δέ τις αἴγειρος, μέγα δένδρεον αἰθέρι κῦρον,

τῷ ἔπι ταὶ νύμφαι ποτὶ τὤνδιον ἑψιόωντο·
ἃ πράτα πλαγεῖσα κακὸν μέλος ἴαχεν ἄλλαις.
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ᾄσθετο Δαμάτηρ, ὅτι οἱ ξύλον ἱερὸν ἄλγει,

εἶπε δὲ χωσαμένα· “τίς μοι καλὰ δένδρεα κόπτει;”
H. Dem. 37–41

There was a poplar, a huge tree reaching to the sky, near which the nymphs
used to play at noon. This was the first tree struck, and it shrieked miserably
to the others. Demeter sensed that her sacred timber was in pain, and said
angrily, “Who is felling my lovely trees?”

In the light of the interpretation of Demeter’s grove discussed earlier, the poplar,
as part of this Callimachean grove, has a metapoetical dimension as a concretization
of Callimachean ὕλη. This is emphasized when Erysichthon hits the tree, causing
it to produce a κακὸν μέλος, a “bad song.”89 Although the entire grove is sacred,
the fact that this particular tree gets so much attention apparently makes it quite
special; the trees that Erysichthon’s men are felling are mentioned only once in
passing:

οἱ μὲν ἄρ’ ἡμιθνῆτες, ἐπεὶ τὰν πότνιαν εἶδον,

ἐξαπίνας ἀπόρουσαν ἐνὶ δρυσὶ χαλκὸν ἀφέντες.
H. Dem. 59–60

When they [Erysichthon’s men] saw the goddess they started away, half-
dead with fear, leaving their bronze implements in the trees.

Because of its thinness, the poplar is ideally suited to embody the Callimachean
poetics of λεπτότης, a point that Apollonius seems to take over in the Hylas episode,
where the pine tree is described as follows:90

εὗρεν ἔπειτ’ ἐλάτην ἀλαλήμενος οὔτε τι πολλοῖς

ἀχθομένην ὄζοις οὐδὲ μέγα τηλεθόωσαν,
ἀλλ’ οἷον ταναῆς ἔρνος πέλει αἰγείροιο
τόσση ὁμῶς μῆκός τε καὶ ἐς πάχος ἦεν ἰδέσθαι.
Arg. 1.1190–93

In his wanderings he [Heracles] then found a pine tree not burdened with
many branches nor sprouting much growth, but like a shoot of a tall poplar;
similar it was in both length and thickness.

I suggest that by emphasizing that the pine tree looks like a poplar, the text
makes the reader more aware of the nature of the tree and marks an allusion to
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Callimachus’s metapoetical poplar. This is reinforced by an allusion to the Aetia

prologue in line 1193. Having compared the pine tree to a shoot of a poplar,91
Apollonius concludes the description of the tree also in terms of the poplar: “similar
[to the shoot] it was in both length and thickness.” The second of the two criteria
used to describe the similarities between the pine tree and the poplar shoot, πάχος
(“thickness”), brings the Aetia prologue to mind. Callimachus here recollects how
Apollo admonished him to “feed the sacrificial animal so that it becomes as fat / as
possible,” but to “keep the Muse slender,” that is, to write refined poetry: τὸ μὲν
θύος ὅττι πάχιστον / θρέψαι, τὴ]ν Μοῦσαν δ’ ὠγαθὲ λεπταλέην. (Aet. fr. 1.23–24 H).
As Apollonius’s pine is obviously also slender—something emphasized by the
comparison with the shoot of a poplar and by the statement in lines 1190–91 that
the tree “is not burdened with many branches”—the similarity of terminology
suggests an allusion to Callimachus’s Aetia in this metapoetical context.
Whether the first criterion, μῆκός (“length”), also alludes to Callimachean
poetics is more questionable. The pine tree, which does not “sprout much growth”
and resembles the shoot of a poplar tree, is not very long and can be said to accord
with Callimachus’s poetical ideal to be ὀλιγόστιχος, “of a few lines” (Aet. fr. 1.9 H).
Callimachus, however, does not use the term μῆκός, which does feature in Aris-
totle’s Poetics. There the length of an epic is prescribed to be “equivalent to the
length of a group of tragedies offered at one hearing” (Poet. 24.1459b), which
would amount to approximately four thousand to five thousand lines. 92 The
Homeric epics are much longer than that, but this number more or less accords
with the Argonautica.93 In line 1193, Apollonius thus seems to adhere to Aristotle’s
poetics but also to those of Callimachus, who, as I have argued in the introduction,
agrees with Aristotle on the right attitude toward Homeric epic. The two also
seem to agree on the proper length of a long narrative poem, as Callimachus’s
Aetia, at a rough estimate, was originally about five thousand lines.94 So, with his
remark on the μῆκος of the pine tree, which, as I have just argued, symbolizes the
Callimachean Argonautica, Apollonius in the first instance expresses his allegiance
to Aristotle about the proper length of an epic, but this is not incompatible with
Callimachus’s own poetics, as the Aetia shows. Nevertheless, Callimachus never
wrote an epic as long as the Argonautica. By comparison, Callimachus’s epic, the
Hecale, was originally much shorter (probably ca. one thousand lines) and also
much less traditional in its subject matter.95 The combination with the mention
of the πάχος of the tree, which alludes directly to Callimachus, suggests that Apol-
lonius in his description of the pine tree metapoetically states that his Argonautica
is written in accordance with the poetics of both Aristotle and Callimachus, which
are compatible with each other, although Callimachus himself would probably
never have conceived an epic like the Argonautica.96

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Apollonius’s pine tree resembles, and arguably alludes to, Callimachus’s

poplar, but there are also striking similarities with Polyphemus’s club in Odyssey 9
(compare the underlinings with Arg. 1.1193 above):

τὀ μὲν ἄμμες ἐίσκομεν εἰσορόωντες

ὅσσον θ’ ἱστὸν νηὸς ἐεικοσόροιο μελαίνης,
φορτίδος εὐρείης, ἥ τ’ ἐκπεράᾳ μέγα λαῖτμα
τόσσον ἔην μῆκος, τόσσον πάχος εἰσοράασθαι.
Od. 9.321–24

And as we [Odysseus and his men] looked at it we thought it as large as is

the mast of a black ship of twenty oars, a merchantman, broad of beam,
which crosses over the great golf; so huge it was in length, so huge in breadth
to look upon.

The possibility of an allusion to this Odyssean passage is strengthened by the

appearance of the Homeric words marked in bold (ἱστὸν νηὸς) in the simile com-
paring Heracles’s brutal uprooting of the tree to a storm hitting the mast of a ship
(1.1201). So both Polyphemus’s club and the Apollonian pine tree are compared to
a ship’s mast. What are we to make of this allusion? First of all, the difference
between the pine tree and the club is obvious, if my interpretation of line 1193 is
accepted: whereas the pine tree is slender and not long (compared as it is to the
shoot of a poplar), the club is huge in both length and thickness. I suggest that the
allusion has metapoetical implications, which become clearer when we take Apol-
lonius’s simile into consideration. Although the pine tree is, like Polyphemus’s
club, likened to a mast, this is not what is directly compared: Heracles’s uprooting
of the tree is compared to a storm, and the point is, as we have seen, that Heracles’s
action symbolizes the danger he poses to the epic. In the Odyssey, the “heroic-epic”
club will help the epic hero Odysseus and his quest; in the Argonautica, the Callima-
chean tree is threatened by the epic hero Heracles. Indirectly, Heracles and Polyphe-
mus are thus also associated with each other, as both are characters who oppose an
epic mission.97 Although Apollonius through the allusion again, as with Heracles,
reveals that Homer is his model, he also again makes clear that his epic is, and
must be, different: heroic action takes no prominent place in the Argonautica.

Hylas and the Spring

After the episode of Heracles searching for and violating the pine
tree, Hylas is described looking for a source to get water for Heracles. Not only

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does this scene take place simultaneously with Heracles’s action (τόφρα, “in the
meantime,” 1207), it is also clearly paralleled with the action of Heracles (ὥς κεν
ἐρετμὸν / οἷ αὐτῷ φθαίη καταχείριον ἐντύνασθαι, 1188–89 ~ ὥς κέ οἱ ὕδωρ / φθαίη
ἀφυσσάμενος ποτιδόρπιον, 1208–9),98 and we are therefore invited to compare the
two scenes with each other. This in turn raises the question whether Hylas’s search
can also be read metapoetically, a question that becomes more urgent when one
realizes that the etymological play in the preceding passage with Hylas’s name, as
derived from ὕλη, “(poetic) subject matter,” may continue to play a role in this
episode.
Another hint that Hylas’s search is susceptible to metapoetical reading is pro-
vided by Propertius, who in his elegy describes Hylas as going to the fount:

at comes invicti iuvenis processerat ultra

raram sepositi quaerere fontis aquam.
Prop. 1.20.23–24

The squire of the invincible hero had gone further afield, to seek the choice
water of a secluded spring.

Propertius here seems to allude to Callimachus’s metapoetical water imagery.99

Rara aqua recalls the pure (καθαρή) and undefiled (ἀχράαντος) spring in Callima-
chus’s Hymn to Apollo (111).100 But Propertius’s sepositi fontis at the same time
brings the κρήνη, the “public fountain,” in Epigram 28 Pf. to mind, which Calli-
machus dislikes, because everyone drinks from it: just as Callimachus will not
drink from the source that everyone else uses, Hylas will go deep into the woods to
find a spring that is “set apart,” namely, Propertius is looking for Callimachean
inspiration.101 Propertius also seems to allude to Apollonius in line 24:102

δίζητο κρήνης ἱερὸν ῥόον

Arg. 1.1208

[Hylas] sought the sacred flow of a spring.

Propertius’s apparent echo of Callimachus through Apollonius suggests that Apol-

lonius too alludes to Callimachus, and in fact the similarities between Apollonius’s
line and the Callimachean passages are striking. The ἱερὸν ῥόον (“holy stream”)
that Hylas is looking for recalls the “holy spring” (πίδακος ἱερῆς) in Callimachus’s
Hymn to Apollo (112). Furthermore, κρήνης (“public spring”) brings to mind

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Epigram 28. In this poem, as we have seen in the introduction, Callimachus rejects
hackneyed poetry from the Epic Cycle, which keeps “recycling” Homer and other
traditional epic material—keeps “drinking” from the same source. The κρήνη can
thus be identified with Homeric poetry, just like the πόντος in the Hymn to Apollo,
the quantity of which was imitated by post-Homeric epic. Like Propertius, Apol-
lonius seems to combine this epigram and the ending of the Hymn to Apollo, but
although Propertius’s Callimachean fons points toward a metapoetical interpre-
tation of Apollonius’s spring, that spring does not at first sight seem to be Cal-
limachean. The spring’s denotation as κρήνη associates it with Homer,103 so
Apollonius seems to claim (through Hylas) that he is drinking from the same
Homeric source as the poets of the un-Callimachean Epic Cycle. Apollonius’s
ῥόον at first sight seems to point in the same direction, for in Apollo’s statement
in the Hymn to Apollo that the “the Assyrian river rolls a massive stream [ μέγας
ῥόος], but it’s mainly silt and garbage that it sweeps along” (108–9), the μέγας ῥόος
refers to post-Homeric epic (such as the Epic Cycle), which equals Homeric epic
in quantity, but not in quality.104 But Apollonius’s ῥόος is ἱερός, a word that at the
end of the Hymn to Apollo is applied to the holy spring that produces pure and
undefiled water of the best quality, that is, Callimachean poetry. Moreover, quite
apart from this single line, Apollonius’s spring also clearly recalls that of Callima-
chus more generally in its remoteness, implying Callimachean purity and thus
quality. So what can be made of this apparent paradox? The parallelism with the
scene involving Heracles that takes place simultaneously creates the impression
that Apollonius’s spring is, like its counterpart, the pine tree, a symbol for (the
poetics of ) the Argonautica. As I have argued, the tree made clear that the Argo-
nautica was properly Callimachean in its relation to Homer, but in a way that
Callimachus would probably not have conceived of himself. Something similar
seems to be the case with the spring. Although the Argonautica is a long epic, a
ῥόος (to keep to the Callimachean terminology), whose source of inspiration,
Homer, can be denoted as a κρήνη, from which many poets have drunk, Apollonius
has with his epic still been able to produce holy, pure, and hence Callimachean
water. Although Callimachus’s spring in the Hymn to Apollo was (implicitly) re-
mote, it was still connected with Homer’s πόντος, whose quality, not quantity, it
emulated. In line 1208, I suggest, Apollonius declares the Callimachean nature of
his epic, which is Callimachean in another way, in that it tries to emulate both
the quality and (to a certain extent) the quantity of Homer,105 something that
Callimachus had not thought possible. Although “Callimachus and Apollonius
were fighting on the same side in the Battle of the Books,”106 they did so in very
different ways.107

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Hylas and Jason

Both Heracles and Hylas go into Callimachean territory. Whereas

Heracles violates the pine tree, an action that symbolizes the danger he poses to the
Callimachean epic, Hylas becomes one with the Callimachean landscape. At the
same time, Hylas makes a transition from a homosexual relationship with Heracles
to a heterosexual one with a nymph.108 Through this separation from Heracles, he
ensures the departure of the hero from the epic. Because Heracles was posing a
serious danger to the Argo, Hylas, through his ἀρετή of attractiveness, has saved
the epic. The appearance of Glaucus at the end of the episode underlines the signifi-
cance of Hylas’s feat, by giving it a divine validation: Heracles belongs to another,
more traditionally heroic kind of epic; his disappearance was meant to be and was
no accident. Hylas is here aligned with Jason, who will succeed in his mission
with the same ἀρετή. This suggests that Hylas is a kind of prefiguration of Jason,
which is reinforced by the intertextual contact between the two. When Hylas
reaches the spring, he is abducted by the nymph, who is struck by the beauty of
the boy, which is emphasized by the rays of the full moon:

ἡ δὲ νέον κρήνης ἀνεδύετο καλλινάοιο

νύμφη ἐφυδατίη. τὸν δὲ σχεδὸν εἰσενόησεν
κάλλεϊ καὶ γλυκερῇσιν ἐρευθόμενον χαρίτεσσιν·
πρὸς γάρ οἱ διχόμηνις ἀπ’ αἰθέρος αὐγάζουσα
βάλλε σεληναίη. τῆς δὲ φρένας ἐπτοίησεν
Κύπρις, ἀμηχανίῃ δὲ μόλις συναγείρατο θυμόν.
Arg. 1.1228–33

But the water nymph was just rising from the fair-flowing spring. She noticed
the boy nearby, glowing with rosy beauty and sweet charms, for the full moon
was casting its rays on him as it gleamed from the sky. Cypris confounded
her thoughts, and in her helpless state she could barely collect her spirit.

The mention of a full moon is quite striking, as it only features once more in the
entire Argonautica, at a much later stage. After Jason has acquired the Golden
Fleece, he and Medea leave the grove of Ares, and a simile follows:

λεῖπον* δὲ πολύσκιον ἄλσος Ἄρηος.

ὡς δὲ σεληναίης διχομήνιδα παρθένος αἴγλην

* λεῖπον Naber : λεῖπεν Sd : λίπεν mG.

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ὑψόθεν ἐξανέχουσαν ὑπωροφίου θαλάμοιο

λεπταλέῳ ἑανῷ ὑποΐσχεται, ἐν δέ οἱ ἦτορ
χαίρει δερκομένης καλὸν σέλας· ὣς τότ’ Ἰήσων
γηθόσυνος μέγα κῶας ἑαῖς ἀναείρετο χερσίν,
καί οἱ ἐπὶ ξανθῇσι παρηίσιν ἠδὲ μετώπῳ
μαρμαρυγῇ ληνέων φλογὶ εἴκελον ἷζεν ἔρευθος.
Arg. 4.166–73

And they left the shade-filled grove of Ares. And as a young girl catches on
her delicate gown the beam of a full moon as it shines forth high above her
upper room, and her heart within her rejoices as she beholds the beautiful
gleam, so joyfully then did Jason lift up the great fleece in his hands, and
upon his golden cheeks and forehead there settled a red glow like a flame
from the shimmering of the wool.

This Homeric simile at first sight refers to Jason’s joy. As Jan Maarten Bremer has
shown, however, the full moon has an “erotic-nuptial connotation,” through
which the girl in the simile clearly refers to Medea, whom Jason has promised to
marry in exchange for help with acquiring the Golden Fleece.109 Bremer infers
“that the simile, by describing the blissful sentiments of a girl looking forward to
her wedding, must have had the effect of initially directing the reader’s attention
to the joy which permeates Medea now that she is walking at Jason’s side as his
bride-to-be.”110 Apollonius has a famous model for this simile technique, for in
Odyssey 23.231–39, the happiness of Penelope at Odysseus’s return is compared to
castaways, happy to set foot on land again, who are strongly reminiscent of Odys-
seus.111 As Bremer observes, “in both passages a climax of the narrative is reached,
a climax with strong erotic aspects: the Odyssey culminating in Odysseus’ reunion
with his faithful wife, the Argonautica in Jason’s capture of the Golden Fleece with
the help of the princess he has promised to marry.”112 In Apollonius this climax is
accompanied by Callimachean imagery. First of all, the gown of the girl in the
simile, with which the fleece is implicitly compared, is described as “delicate”
(λεπταλέῳ ἑανῷ, 169), which recalls Callimachus’s denotation of his Muse
(λεπταλέην, Aet. fr. 1.24 H).113 The connection of the word here with weaving, a
widespread metaphor for the poetical process,114 reinforces the metapoetical asso-
ciation of the gown and thus of the fleece that is compared with it. Two lines later,
Apollonius emphasizes the actual size of the fleece: it is a μέγα κῶας, a “great
fleece.” The impression is created that the Golden Fleece, the objective of the epic
mission, symbolizes the Argonautica itself, which Apollonius in his Hylas episode
has characterized as a Callimachean as well as large-scale epic. This is reinforced
by a second simile, comparing the size of the fleece to the hide of an ox or a deer:
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ὅσση δὲ ῥινὸς βοὸς ἤνιος ἢ ἐλάφοιο

γίγνεται, ἥν τ’ ἀγρῶσται ἀχαιϊννέην καλέουσιν,
τόσσον ἔην, πάντῃ χρύσεον, ἐφύπερθε δ’* ἄωτον
βεβρίθει λήνεσσιν ἐπηρεφές.
Arg. 4.174–77

As large as the hide of a yearling ox or of the deer which hunters call the
achaiines, so great it was, all golden, and its fleecy covering was heavy with
wool.

In this same passage in which the size and weight (βεβρίθει, 177) of the fleece is
described, the exclusiveness of its wool is emphasized (ἄωτον, “fine wool”). Again,
Apollonius seems to allude to the poetics of Callimachus, who uses the word to
denote the exclusive poetry that he promotes in his Hymn to Apollo (112).115
So the climax of the Callimachean epic mission, the acquisition of the Golden
Fleece, is associated with the marriage of Jason and Medea in a simile concerning
the fleece. At the same time this simile emphasizes the Callimachean nature of the
epic through the hinted metapoetical symbolism of the fleece. When we now
return to the abduction of Hylas, we see that something similar is happening there,
in a similarly crucial moment in the epic. The scene constitutes another, albeit
provisional, climax, as it ensures the departure of Heracles from the epic. Again
this climax is associated with marriage, for the full moon suggests that the nymph,
by abducting Hylas, consummates her love.116 The implied marriage is closely
associated with the spring, which, as I argued, symbolizes Apollonius’s Callima-
chean epic. This is very similar to the situation in book 4, where marriage is closely
related to another symbol of the Argonautica, the Golden Fleece.
Hylas’s abduction thus functions as a prefiguration of the epic’s main objec-
tive, Jason’s acquisition of the Golden Fleece, and the transformed Hylas himself
can be seen as a kind of precursor of the successful love hero that Jason will even-
tually become. In fact, in the Hylas episode, the epic has taken an important step
in the “right” direction, by causing an important threat to the epic to leave. Hylas’s
entry into the spring, which symbolizes Apollonius’s Callimachean epic, and the
concomitant leaving behind of Heracles, reflect Apollonius’s attitude toward
heroic-epic poetry and Homer in particular, which Apollonius can follow to a
certain extent, but which he has to leave behind at some point. Although Apollonius

* ἐφύπερθε δ’ Merkel : ἐφύπερθεν Ω.

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tried to write heroic epic in the course of the first book, the Homeric-epic fight at
Cyzicus turned into the slaughter of friends, and in a Homeric rowing contest
Heracles posed a great danger to the Argo. In hindsight, the Lemnos episode already
revealed the way the epic was destined to go, but Heracles could then still steer the
epic in another, more heroic, direction.
Hylas is then, like Jason, a mise en abyme of Apollonius’s poetic persona.
The boy’s switch from a pederastic love affair with Heracles to union with the
nymph can be read as the final step in Apollonius’s gradual maturation and inde-
pendence as a poet with regard to his model, Homer.117 The metapoetical inter-
pretation of this transition is reinforced by the fact that the pederastic relationship
between Heracles and Hylas is modeled on the relationship between Achilles and
Patroclus.118 Admittedly, Homer did not explicitly describe their relationship as
pederastic, but this is how it was interpreted by many post-Homeric writers,119
including Apollonius himself, who in Arg. 3.744–60 models Medea’s insomnia,
with its clear erotic dimension, on that of Achilles, yearning for the dead Patroclus
in Iliad 24.1–13.120 The pederastic relationship between Heracles and Hylas betrays
a similar erotic interpretation of Homer’s Achilles and Patroclus by Apollonius. It
can therefore be argued that the love affair between Heracles and Hylas is an evo-
cation of Homer’s heroic-epic world, whereas the union between Hylas and the
nymph has Callimachean associations. In this way Hylas’s switch from Heracles
to the nymph symbolizes Apollonius’s own switch to a new kind of epic, one that
requires a different kind of heroism, as demonstrated by Jason later on in the
story.121 This does not imply that Apollonius renounced his Homeric heritage. As
a Callimachean, Apollonius would have regarded Homer as his poetical teacher,
and this, in fact, seems to be implied in line 1.1211: δὴ γάρ μιν τοίοισιν ἐν ἤθεσιν
αὐτὸς ἔφερβεν, “For in such habits had Heracles himself raised him [Hylas].” Like
Hylas and Jason, however, it is time for Apollonius to mature and find his own
poetical niche.122

Heracles and Theiodamas

This metapoetical interpretation of Hylas and Heracles in the

Argonautica is anticipated by Apollonius in a digression that immediately follows
the statement quoted above about Heracles being Hylas’s teacher, and that explains
how the two met:

δὴ γάρ μιν τοίοισιν ἐν ἤθεσιν αὐτὸς ἔφερβεν,

νηπίαχον τὰ πρῶτα δόμων ἐκ πατρὸς ἀπούρας,
δίου Θειοδάμαντος, ὃν ἐν Δρυόπεσσιν ἔπεφνεν

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νηλειῶς βοὸς ἀμφὶ γεωμόρου ἀντιόωντα.

ἤτοι ὁ μὲν νειοῖο γύας τέμνεσκεν ἀρότρῳ
Θειοδάμας ἀνίῃ βεβολημένος· αὐτὰρ ὁ τόν γε
βοῦν ἀρότην ἤνωγε παρασχέμεν οὐκ ἐθέλοντα.
ἵετο γὰρ πρόφασιν πολέμου Δρυόπεσσι βαλέσθαι
λευγαλέην, ἐπεὶ οὔ τι δίκης ἀλέγοντες ἔναιον.
ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν τηλοῦ κεν ἀποπλάγξειεν ἀοιδῆς.
Arg. 1.1211–20

For in such habits had Heracles himself raised him [Hylas], ever since he
took him as an infant from the palace of his father, noble Theiodamas, whom
he ruthlessly killed among the Dryopians for opposing him over a plowing
ox. Now Theiodamas, stricken with pain, was cleaving his fallow fields with
a plow, when Heracles ordered him to hand over the plowing ox against his
will. For he was eager to create a dire pretext for war against the Dryopians,
because they lived there with no concern for justice. But these things would
divert me far from my song.

Apollonius abruptly ends the digression, letting his poetical persona intrude on
the narrative by stating, “These things would divert me far from my song.” Apol-
lonius here uses the verb ἀποπλάζω (“lead away”),123 which occurs only four more
times in the Argonautica, always as an aorist passive with the sense “go away from”
or “leave behind.” Strikingly, in three of these four occurrences, the verb is asso-
ciated with separation from Heracles.124 Shortly after Apollonius’s Theiodamas
digression, Heracles will in fact be left behind by the Argonauts, an event with
clear metapoetical overtones, as we have seen. As Glaucus reveals (1.1317–20),
Heracles is now reunited with his own poetic world, that of his heroic labors, the
subject of a Heracleid. A few lines later Glaucus uses the verb ἀποπλάζω to describe
what has happened: Heracles and his companions were left behind (ἀποπλαγχθέντες
ἔλειφθεν, 1.1325). Apollonius’s striking use of the same verb to let his persona
intrude and cut short his story of Heracles and Theiodamas can thus be read as a
metapoetical statement, at a crucial juncture in the poem. When the Argonauts
are about to leave Heracles behind, the poet writes Heracles out of his epic by
cutting short a story that befits a poem recounting the hero’s entire life. It is this
kind of poem, a Heracleid, with which Heracles is associated in course of the first
book of the Argonautica, that the Callimachean poet Apollonius does not want to
write, as he states by removing Heracles and abruptly stopping a digression about
him at a programmatic position at the end of book 1.125

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The story about Heracles and Hylas’s father, Theiodamas, was also told by
Callimachus in the first book of his Aetia, and a comparison of the two accounts
provides an interesting opportunity to compare the different approaches of these
“Callimachean” poets with regard to Heracles. The fragmentary state of Callima-
chus’s version prevents us from drawing any firm conclusions, but it is likely that
the story of Heracles and Theiodamas was told because of its similarity to the
preceding one, concerning the origin of the sacrifice to Heracles at Lindos (fr. 22–­
23 H). This story also deals with Heracles killing the bull of a farmer because of
his appetite, and it was in fact often confused with the story of Heracles and
Theiodamas.126 The scholia make the connection between the two episodes very
clear:

]ασθαι Λίνδιοι κ(αὶ) τοῦτο[

α]ὐτοῖς. π(αρα)τίθεται δ(ὲ) κ(αὶ) ἄλλ[ον μῦθον τῳ προειρημένῳ127
ὅ]μοιον, ἡνίκα ἀπ’ Αἰ[τωλίας φεύγων ὁ Ἡρακλῆς
]π(ερι)έτυχεν Θειοδά[μαντι
fr. 23a. 7–10 H = Σ Flor. 50–53

Lindians and that . . . and an[other tale] similar [to the one just told] is set
beside it, how [Heracles fleeing ] from Ai[tolia] fell in with Theiodamas.128

So Callimachus’s focus is on Heracles, and if Hylas featured at all in the story, his
role is likely to have been of secondary importance. Nevertheless, apart from the
general similarities, there is clear intertextual contact between the two episodes,129
and I think Apollonius alludes to Callimachus to express metapoetically how he
differs from Callimachus in his treatment of Heracles. 130 Apollonius depicts
Heracles as rather brutal in his behavior toward Theiodamas, and he refuses to
digress on the “civilizing” war against the Dryopians that follows,131 an action that
can also be seen more negatively, as a mere excuse.132 Callimachus’s fragments, on
the other hand, suggest that the hero is acting in a more civilized manner in the
parallel passage. There, for instance, Heracles is acting not egoistically, as in Apol-
lonius’s version, but on behalf of his hungry son, Hylas, and Theiodamas seems to
start the war against Heracles, not vice versa.133 The hero’s behavior in the Aetia
has thus radically changed, for in the preceding Lindos episode he was still depicted
as a brute, killing a farmer to satisfy his own appetite.134 As we have seen in the
introduction, the depiction of Heracles in this earlier episode has a metapoetical
dimension, as the hero is contrasted with Callimachean poetics.135 As Annemarie
Ambühl has shown, however, “in the first book of the book of the Aetia, we witness

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the gradual transformation of Heracles from a barbarian into a civilized hero.”136

We cannot see anymore whether Callimachus also started to transform Heracles
into a “Callimachean hero” in his Theiodamas episode, but Apollonius’s allusions
to Callimachus makes this very likely. Apollonius has clearly combined Callima-
chus’s Lindos and Theiodamas episodes,137 but whereas Callimachus describes a
transformation, Heracles’s behavior in the Argonautica is consistently depicted in
an unfavorable light, and Apollonius refuses to deal with the possible civilizing
and Callimachean aspects of Heracles, leaving that, as it were, to Callimachus. That
Apollonius’s allusive combination of Callimachus’s episodes has a metapoetical
dimension involving Callimachean poetics suggests that Callimachus’s transfor-
mation also had a metapoetical edge to it, to which Apollonius reacts.
Although Apollonius and Callimachus agree on their evaluation of the tradi-
tionally heroic Heracles and the type of poetry he represents, their approaches
toward the hero differ significantly. Whereas Callimachus gradually changes and
appropriates the old hero to symbolize his own poetics and his gradually maturing
attitude toward the heroic-epic literary tradition, Apollonius’s Heracles stays
consistently in his traditional and un-Callimachean role as a symbol of outdated
heroic-epic poetry, forced to leave the Callimachean epic to reenter his own poetic
world. It is rather Hylas and Jason who act as Apollonius’s representations in the
text, gradually maturing as new, Callimachean heroes in the footsteps of Heracles.

52